Theory Building, Enriching, and Fact Gathering: Alternative Purposes of Psychotherapy Research

Abstract

In this chapter, I draw distinctions among three classes of research purposes: theory building, enriching, and fact gathering. Theory-building research seeks to test, improve, and extend a particular theory. Enriching research seeks to deepen and enrich people's appreciation or understanding of a phenomenon. Fact-gathering research seeks to discover facts without explicitly focusing on a unified theory or systematically unpacking the meanings in a phenomenon. Insofar as the distinction concerns the purposes of research, not the methods, any method may be used to advance any of the purposes.